Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

— Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law

ebfaulkner6a

NGC6781c

NGC6781c

color combined, 12 min each RGB

NGC6781

NGC6781

Taken 9-14-10 thru 111mm Astrotech combined 37 x 2 min exposures totaling 74 minutes.  Located in  Aquila this planetary nebula was 2 ly across but continues to expand.  The central star is a blue white dwarf but is not visible here, may need to mag image.

This was also a guided image using Starlight Xpress CCD and SX guider.

Color combined

Color combined

same as prior description except combined color, however interesting.  519R, 300B, 500G makes for the unusual color.  No luminence.  This image reduced yellow.

First Light

First Light

This is my first attempt using my newly purchased CGEM and Astro Tech 111EDT telescope, TeleVue 5x lens, Starlight Xpress CCD.  It is over 1300  combined images totaling just over 49 seconds exposure at 0.1 sec each.    Will post color image also.

Rising Moon

Rising Moon

The Moon was rising in the East and the color was yellow-orange-red as it appeared thru the Earths atmosphere.  I took very short iamges, 30  0.001 sec exposures each R,G,B and 30 0.001 sec clear, and 30 0.003 Ha filter combined.  Strange.  Orion 80ED on CGEM mount.

Joe, nice color combined image of M27.   Let's see, what is the going rate for imaging at darker sites?  Hmmmm.

NGC5965, with NGC 5963, 5971

NGC5965, with NGC 5963, 5971

Using a small scope for imaging is great for wide field imaging, but if your looking to image galaxies, you need to check its' size first.  Otherwise you end up with an image like this one where three or more galaxies are present, and tiny, and dim.  The galaxy in the lower center is edge-on NGC5965, and just to the left nearby is the blurry star-like galaxy NGC5963, with NGC5961 just above and to the left of center...also dim and "glowing".  This is a combined 10 x 8 min guided exposure image.

NGC6027dI

NGC6027dI

This one hour image unguided taken Friday evening, June 19, 2010 with Orion 80ED mounted on a Celestron CGEM goto mount.  I attempted to image these galaxies before and decided I would try again last night.  The galaxies known as Seyfert Sexteltt in Serpens Cauda looked like they were merging some 49,000 ly distance.  Located near ra 15h 59m  dec +20d 43', they appear in the center of this image (sort of triangle appearance).   Actually wanted another two galaxies merging, but this one was a challange with this scope.  Next time I may try imaging with the

M51_2hrExposure SN2005cs

M51_2hrExposure SN2005cs

Took your advice Joe and image M51 for 2 consecutive hours, guiding did not work again, so I did it the OLD FASHION WAY, 120 one minute combined images in MaximDL/CCD.   Was a great night until the Moon came up causing a hazy sky throughout the East and Southeastern skies.  Tried guiding with the software that came with the mount after completing the above image, it showed that it was guiding, star did not go outside the crosshair.  I did not image as it was already 1:30 am Monday and I was tired.

M51

M51

Taken Tuesday evening from Whiting, NJ, thru my trusted Orion 80ED on a Celestron CGEM mount.  Set up to do a one hour exposure, due to high "not so thin" clouds I was forced to close after 28 minutes, which is what this exposure totals.  

NGC3623 aka M66 along with M65

NGC3623 aka M66 along with M65

First night out in quite awhile, this image was taken thru my Orion 80ED on my Losmandy GM8.  My intention was to image M66 (upper spiral) but with such a wide field I also caught M65.  This is only a raw 23 min image, first since last fall.